Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Jimmy Lee Dean, after the brutal July 2008 hate crime attack that nearly took his life.

Dallas, Texas – Jimmy Lee Dean deserves help from the North Texas LGBTQ community. In July 2008, he was brutally attacked by two young men bent on robbing and savaging a gay man in the storied Cedar Springs neighborhood. The heroic act of bouncers from a nearby bar, and a local passerby saved Jimmy Lee from dying, then and there. But the injuries he sustained that night ruined his life.

Now, his face a wreck from failed surgeries, Jimmy Lee Dean has reached out to the LGBTQ community in his longtime Dallas home. But despite coverage by the Dallas Voice commemorating the Fifth Anniversary of the attack that nearly stole his life away, and an Indiegogo campaign to raise the money to set his ravaged face right again, only three anonymous funders have risen to the challenge, and reached out to Jimmy Lee. What is going on here? Besides the usual American aversion to remembering difficult events for longer than a news cycle, or perhaps background problems with this particular case-gone-cold, could there be something else preventing LGBTQ people from responding positively to the pleas of a home-grown hate crime victim who barely escaped with his life?

“On July 17, 2008 I was the victim of a hate crime in Dallas, Texas. Through the kind act of everyday people like you, I did not die that night. The criminals were stopped, prosecuted and the good people of Texas provided $50,00.00 from their crime victims fund to repair my physical damages and any phycological [sic] help that might be needed.

“Problems started when I left Parkland County Hospital intensive care unit. Up to that point everything seemed to be going ok. Then After some 16 visits to the Oral Surgery Clinic, 2 surgeries and one attempted surgery that never took place and 27 visits to Parkland crisis center I am in the same phycical [sic] situation as at the crime scene.

“Work done in the second surgery at Parkland Hospital has all come undone. My jaw and cheek bone are no longer attached. Teeth have never been dealt with. No one has followed up on my broken back. I have headaces [sic] every other day. My eyes are having problems. I walk with a causious gate [sic]. I get light headed all the time. I don’t reallly go anywere because of the facial disfigurments and the way I look when I eat.

“I never asked for what happend. It could have been anyone of us at that spot at that time.

“My dreams and identity are gone along with my alillity [sic] to smell, but maybe there are medical procedures that might restore me to a point where I can have some kind of a normal life.”

The anti-gay hate crime attack on Jimmy Lee in the heart of the “Gayborhood” was an outrage. The two defendants in the case, Jonathan Gunter and Bobby Singleton, were brought to justice. Gunter received a 30 year sentence, and Singleton got 70 years. Jimmy Lee Dean moved away from Dallas to try and put his life back together, but his orphaned story has largely been unremembered and unattended, despite the efforts of a few LGBT activists who went court in support of Jimmy Lee, and the efforts of the Dallas Voice editors and staff.

Who knows if Jimmy Lee’s assailants will serve their whole sentences–sentences achieved by the Dallas D.A.’s Office without hate crime enhancements for the usual reasons that hate crimes are hard to prove in Texas? But what Jimmy Lee is asking for is something more tangible than answers to opaque questions of law and right and wrong. He is asking for financial help. And, as of this writing, only three donors out of the thousands and thousands of queer folk in North Texas have done anything. The Indiegogo fund stands at $100.00.

Shaming, of course, does little or no good. But the broader question behind the non-response to the pleas of a bona fide hate crimes survivor is whether there is anything like an LGBTQ community to appeal to in the first place? Has the loose association of interest groups and tavern patrons, the merchants and real estate developers in Dallas who are happy to claim to be progressive LGBTQ community members when it suits their self-interest, actually never matured into a community at all? Is the reason for the non-response to the call of a former member of the Gayborhood for help actually because there was no real LGBTQ community in Dallas to begin with? And, what are the signs that a gathering of people on the margins of heterosexual society have begun to attain the seriousness and sacrifice for their own people that denotes a community of character and concern?

Jimmy Lee Dean now (Indiegogo Campaign page image).

Whether Jimmy Lee’s appeal finds its way into the generous heart of queer Texans remains to be seen. LGBTQ Texans are an able bunch, once they are motivated. But hate crimes victims are at least one important litmus test of a true community, as African Americans, Jews, and Buddhist commemorators of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can attest from their own histories of struggle and resistance. A community begins to become serious and exist in the real world when it starts to take care of its own whenever they meet crisis and disaster. Until then, it is a fair-weather association, at best.

About

If you are a first-time visitor to the Unfinished Lives Project website, we invite you to read A Welcome Message introducing you to our project. We are truly grateful for your visit.

The Unfinished Lives Project website is a place of public discourse which remembers and honors LGBTQ hate crime victims, while also revealing the reality of unseen violence perpetrated against people whose only “offense” is their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender presentation. LGBTQ people in the United States are suffering a slow-rolling decimation of terror and murder all across the country. Every locale and demographic of society are affected: First Nations, Anglo, Black, Latino and Latina, South and Southeast Asian, Transgender, Bisexuals, Gay men, Lesbians, disabled, young, and mature. Homophobia has a long, crooked arm, and it is reaching out to snatch the life away from women and men whose tragic stories are under-reported to begin with, and whose memories are swiftly forgotten.

The horror of these killings transcends the shock and bereavement of loved ones and friends. These are not typical homicides; they are not killings for money or drugs, incidents of domestic strife, or crimes of passion. The vicious nature of hate crimes against LGBTQ persons is extremely brutal, grotesquely violent, and egregiously hateful.

Each murder serves the LGBTQ population as a sobering warning about the actual level of danger in our communities. The message these killings send is that freedom and open life for LGBTQ people is a cruel dream. Every time we remember one of these victims, however, the intentions of their killers are frustrated. To remember these women and men is to begin the process of changing the culture that killed them.

Our Project Director

Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle (Keith Tew photo).

Stephen V. Sprinkle is Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry, and Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas, a post he has held since 1994. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the first open and out Gay scholar in the history of the Divinity School, and the first open and out LGBTQ person to be tenured there. Read More…

Recent Social Justice Advocacy Activity By Dr. Sprinkle

Summer 2009 – Dr. Sprinkle responded to the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s newest gay bar, on June 28, 2009, the exact 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Dr. Sprinkle was invited to speak at three protest events sponsored by Queer LiberAction of Dallas. Here, he is keynoting the Rainbow Lounge Protest at the Tarrant County Courthouse on July 12, 2009. Read More…

Schedule a Presentation

Dr. Sprinkle will gladly present his acclaimed presentation to your organization. To arrange an Unfinished Lives presentation for your organization or group, please contact us.Dr. Sprinkle has given his Unfinished Lives presentation to these and other community groups and organizations. Read More…